Reactivating commuter cycling: COVID-19 pandemic disruption to everyday transport choices in Sydney, Australia

The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent rollout of public health lockdown orders, social distancing measures, and general avoidance of crowded and enclosed places, like mass public transport, have disrupted everyday transport mobilities worldwide. This paper offers insights on the transformative potential of pandemic disruption on transport behaviours through the experiences of commuter cycling reactivation which took place in Sydney, Australia since March 2020. We combine sensory ethnography with Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the refrain to interpret the pandemic as an experimental reference point in the reactivation of commuter cycling, specifically with regards to timing, flow, and spacings. Experiences of commuter cycling in Sydney reveal how fear is attached to cycling bodies. The sensations of self that arise through such conflict are differentiated within and between gendered bodies and urban topography, elements, and infrastructure. We find that for reactivated cyclists, the ability to fashion commuter cycling territories as safe and efficient is an ongoing experimental process of temporal and spatial segregation and separation. In this regard, the pandemic rendered concrete new possibilities of everyday commuting, but these remained constrained by popular discourses relating to cycling and cyclists.

Automated summary

This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on transportation behaviors and the potential changes in commuter cycling through the experiences in Sydney, Australia. The study finds that the pandemic has created new possibilities for safe and efficient commuter cycling, but these possibilities are still constrained by societal discourse on cycling and cyclists.